Tinney Chapel Today

Tinney Talk: Observations by Joe Dan Boyd

NINETY-NINE YEARS IS A LONG TIME by any human standard, as 99-year-old Ina Hollingsworth might readily admit, if asked, when her birthday rolls around on May 24. Others born that same year, 1909: Errol Flynn, Benny Goodman, Burl Ives, Carmen Miranda. It was the year William Howard Taft succeeded Theodore Roosevelt as President.

INA HOLLINGSWORTH’S BIRTH brightened the lives and strengthened the family of Kelsey and Elizabeth Reid at Stout, then a young community, named in 1877 after pioneer settler Henry Stout. There, Ina formed her first recollections of church: “We worshipped in the first floor of a two-story building on the Stout school grounds,” she recalls. “The Woodmen of the World office was upstairs.”

INA’S GRANDFATHER, James R. Reid, was a Baptist preacher, who left home afoot on Saturday mornings in time to reach his congregation on Sunday, and be back home on Monday. Ina was baptized, at age 11, into the Sharon Baptist Church, which she attended faithfully until her marriage, at age 23, to Joe T. Hollingsworth, destined to be a pillar in two Methodist congregations: Shady Grove and Tinney Chapel!

“DERRELL AND I JOINED SHADY GROVE the same day,” recalls Ina, who had delayed moving her membership from Sharon. “But I was a practicing Methodist at Shady Grove from the day I married Joe, and that continued after the merger with Tinney Chapel.” According to an old newsletter belonging to Kathy Brown, that merger took place on April 4, 1993, expanding the membership at Tinney Chapel significantly.

“SHADY GROVE WAS A CIRCUIT CHURCH, and my husband, Joe, attended Tinney Chapel twice a month on the alternate Sundays,” explains Ina. “Joe loved the people at Tinney Chapel, especially Ed Tinney, and he worked toward the consolidation with Tinney Chapel. At that time, Shady Grove had no Sunday School, and did not recite the Apostles Creed or the Lord’s Prayer regularly, but we had more singing of the old songs, and a longer preaching service. We did have the Lord’s Supper, for which I prepared the elements, on the First Sunday of each month.”

WHEN INA HOLLINGSWORTH RECALLS the old days of strong faith and meaningful dedication, it’s a lesson for all of us!

# posted by Joe Dan Boyd @ 3/28/2008